The Raptors’ summer school is set to begin, and there’s more time than usual this year

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This article was published 13/05/2021 (1953 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Raptors will have time to spare this NBA off-season, more time than they have had in years, and it will not be used for reflection.

There is work to be done, serious work of player development, and it takes precedence over any retrospection of the first non-playoff spring in eight years.

“With the extra time, we should be able to sneak in another rotation” of individual player workouts, Raptors coach Nick Nurse said this week. “Usually … it’s summer league, then you’re off for a bit, then you’re back on.”

That extra rotation, where coaches visit players and specific skills are developed, should start almost immediately. There will be exit interviews to be conducted at the beginning of next week when the organization lays out specifics for each player. followed by a short break. But unlike other seasons, when the Raptors would have at least a month of playoff series to deal with, they can get start up again earlier.

After losing almost the entire off-season in 2020 to the pandemic, the Raptors can set specific development needs for specific players. They will have time to work on Chris Boucher’s ballhandling, Malachi Flynn’s shooting, Freddie Gillespie’s offensive range, Yuta Watanabe’s small forward skills and others still in the planning stages.

The time, though, is invaluable.

“That’s all been planned out and put on the calendar already,” Nurse said. “I think we’re eager for it because we didn’t get much of (an off-season) last year. We’ve always thought it’s been a huge part of our development and our success.”

The development program has already started in real-game situations as the Raptors continue to play without just about every significant player in the final week of the season.

Kyle Lowry (rest), Fred VanVleet (hip), OG Anunoby (calf), Pascal Siakam (shoulder), Gary Trent Jr. (late scratch) and Boucher (knee) sat out Thursday’s game in Chicago along with Paul Watson (knee), Rodney Hood (finger) and Aron Baynes (foot).

That left seven relatively inexperienced players — Flynn, Jalen Harris, Gary Trent Jr., Stanley Johnson, DeAndre’ Bembry, Gillespie and Watanabe — to face the Bulls in the third-last game of the season. And Watanabe left before halftime with a sore ankle in the Raptors’ 114-102 loss. Johnson had a career high 35 points for the Raptors, becoming the ninth player this season to score 30 or more in a game.

The loss locks the Raptors into the seventh worst record this season.

For Nurse, the game continued to provide real-time teaching opportunities. You can sense there are points in games when the coach would love to just blow his whistle, stop the proceedings for some instructional moments and carry on. There aren’t enough timeouts in a game to allow him to do all the pointing out he wants but he tries to sneak in some instruction on the fly.

“There’s probably a lot more learning and teaching that needs to go on with younger players, maybe that’s what you’re seeing a little bit,” Nurse said this week. “Usually the vets … you tell them one time and they’re going to make the shift or they’re going to make it on their own. The younger guys … don’t see it, they don’t feel it, so you’ve got to maybe tell them again or tell them in a different way or draw it out for them or whatever it is.

“You just keep looking for the way that they can let it sink in and then take it to the floor and execute it.”

But the games are going to end Sunday — the last game in Tampa against Indiana was set for 1 p.m. by the league on Thursday – and that’s when the work really begins.

The Raptors will have a top-10 draft pick for the first time since they chose Jakob Poeltl ninth in 2016, and that process will keep scouts busy.

For Nurse and his developmental staff, though, it will be about fine-tuning and expanding the skills of players Toronto will invite back.

The decision about who they’ll invest summer work in has yet to be made. There are a raft of possibilities — Flynn, Harris, Birch, Watanabe, Watson, Gillespie are chief among them — but not everyone will be back when training camp convenes in the fall.

“There may be some guys that go through to summer league, and they may be evaluated from there,” Nurse said. “Or they may get to training camp. I think it’s a similar process and I think everybody’s probably in a different boat individually.”